India
proposes farm reforms at WTONew Delhi, August 20India and 13 other developing
countries have given their response to the recent EU-US proposals for
agriculture negotiations in the WTO, the government said today. The
joint proposal was presented in Geneva, Minister for Commerce and
Industry Arun Jaitley said.

Cartel of
truckers choking Baddi unitsBaddi, August 20A cartel of over 2,000 truck
operators here created by three local truck unions have allegedly forced
some of the units to close down. Other industrialists continue to reel
under the pressure of truck unions.

A Sony employee shows off the company's new two mega pixel digital camera in Tokyo on Wednesday. The camera's lens rotate 210 degrees and allow users to take self portraits. The camera goes on sale on September 19 for $253.
— Reuters

Apple
unveils fastest PCNew Delhi, August 20Apple today launched the world’s
fastest personal computer — Power Mac G5 — and claimed that it
featured the world’s first 64-bit desktop processor and the
industry’s first 1 GHz front-side bus.

Coca-Cola
lassi, nimbupani to woo villagersNew Delhi, August 20Coca-Cola India said today that
it was seeking to consolidate its position in the rural areas and
declared that the ‘Cola War’ was over. “Cola war was dead with
200 ml coke bottle at Rs 5,’’ Mr Sanjiv Gupta, President and CEO
of Coca-Cola India said here today.

HDFC
Life launches gratuity schemeChandigarh, August 20HDFC Standard Life Insurance has
launched a new gratuity plan that will enable employers to meet their
gratuity liability in a flexible way while getting adequate returns in
a systematic and cost-effective manner, said Mr Manider Sood, Regional
Head of the company, here today.

New Delhi, August 20
India and 13 other developing countries have given their response to the recent EU-US proposals for agriculture negotiations in the WTO, the government said today.

The joint proposal was presented in Geneva, Minister for Commerce and Industry Arun Jaitley said.

Its co-sponsors are China, Mexico and some members of the Cairns group of agriculture exporting countries — Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, Thailand and South Africa.

Mr Jaitley said the market access commitments sought to be imposed by the European Union (EU) and the USA completely disregard the interests and concerns of the developing countries with regard to agriculture.

“Our response proposes the Uruguay Round approach to tariff reduction by the developing countries and steeper reduction by the developed countries using among others, the Swiss formula.”

The proposed reform in agriculture in the EU-US proposals to eliminate subisidies — both domestic and export subsidies — and distortions completely fails to meet the requirements and objectives of the Doha ministerial mandate.

Therefore, it proposes time-bound elimination of all export subsidies by the developing countries, substantial reduction in all forms of trade distorting domestic support, including elimination of Blue Box measures and capping of specific Green Box measures such as payments decoupled from prices and production.

The Blue Box measures are subsidies meant to limit production in the developed countries.

Mr Jaitley said the EU-US proposals emphasise the need to build in specific elements of the special and differential treatment requirements of the developing countries such as maintaining and enhancing support programmes for low income and resource poor farmers.

The proposals emphasise the need to maintain marketing and transport subsidies on exports by the developing countries, to incorporate the market access instruments of special products for rural development and food security, and new special safeguard mechanism for the developing countries to safeguard price variations, volatility and import surges.

The EU-US joint paper on agriculture was presented to the WTO on August 13.

Mr Jaitley said the 14 countries which have responded to it produce 60 per cent of rice in the world, 30 per cent of wheat and 57 per cent of sugarcane. The response will be indicative of on-going negotiations, he said.

Responding to a question, the minister denied any differences of opinion between the commerce and agriculture ministries.

Walk out of WTO, says Govindacharya

Former BJP general secretary Govindacharya said today if the government is unable to protect the interests of the country at the WTO meet at Cancun in September, it should not hesitate to withdraw from the membership of the organisation.

“The country should shed its psychological diffidence keeping in mind that it cannot be isolated as it represented one-sixth of humanity,” Mr Govindacharya said, calling upon the government not to give any further concessions at the September 10-14 meet in Mexico.

The government should oppose the agreement on agriculture and investment which is against the interest of farmers and small traders. The country should not come down even if it has to walk out of the organisation, he added.

On the issue of surviving outside the WTO regime, he said we should not be afraid of isolation which was hypothetical in view of our huge population. We should bargain on our potential market and have the right to pick and choose, he said.
— UNI

Baddi, August 20
A cartel of over 2,000 truck operators here created by three local truck unions have allegedly forced some of the units to close down. Other industrialists continue to reel under the pressure of truck unions.

The industry representatives allege that while the state government is wooing investors by offering incentives, hundreds of industrial units here have been facing harassment at the hands of truck unions here.

The truckers unions here has been allegedly forcing industrial units to pay exorbitant charges, besides union tax amounting to Rs 500 for hiring container-based trucks from other stations as these are not available with the local operators, they
added. The unions have also not been allowing industrialists to hire trucks from other stations.

Mr Deepak Bhandari, senior vice-president, Baddi Barotiwala and Nalagarh Employers Association, said, “The local truck union charges exorbitantly for transporting goods to Chandigarh, Delhi and other places. For instance, from Chandigarh to Baddi, a truck operator charges about Rs 1,200 for transporting goods, but for transporting goods to Chandigarh, we have to pay Rs 2,300. Similarly, for Baddi to Delhi we have to pay Rs 5,600 against Rs 3,000 for the other side.” The truck operators, however, denied these allegations.

Mr Bhandari said despite repeated representations to the state government, no action had been taken against them.

On the other hand, he said, the Punjab Government, in its Industrial Policy, told its Deputy Commissioners to ensure that truck unions did not interfere in the fixing of freight rates which would be determined by market forces.

Mr B.K. Purhoit, senior vice-president, Deepak Spinners, said, “We feel helpless before the truck operators. There is no alternative but to enter into agreement with them. The government must come forward otherwise it will discourage new investors.”

New Delhi, August 20
Apple today launched the world’s fastest personal computer — Power Mac G5 — and claimed that it featured the world’s first 64-bit desktop processor and the industry’s first 1 GHz front-side bus.

Top company officials said today that it was ahead of fastest Pentium 4 and dual Xeon-based PC systems at present available.

Apple
Asia Pacific product marketing manager Richard A. Ng said the company identified Bollywood as a potential business segment.

“We see Bollywood as one of our potential customers. The end-to-end video solutions of G5 will be a bonanza for the Indian film Industry”,
he said.

The machine, jointly produced by Apple and IBM, will carry a price tag ranging between Rs 1,74,400 and 2,54,800.

The heart of the new Power Macs is the PowerPC G5 processor — designed by IBM Corp — that can handle twice as much data at once as traditional PC microchips.

Pointing out that the PowerPC G5 processor, produced jointly by IBM and Apple, will give Mac users dramatically improved performance in the high-end, gaming and graphics markets, Mr
Richard Ng said the new system will be available by the end of this month.

Hong Kong, August 20
Hong Kong economy, which suffered one of its worst setbacks ever, is also now making efforts to be back on the rails.

The administration has launched an HK $400 million worth of a tourist extravaganza, which includes, besides the gifting of free tickets to guests from around the world, an HK $15 million super draw.

The prizes on offer include a deluxe residential apartment, membership to the premium golf club and a luxury car. There are of course many prizes worth HK$ 100,000.

As a start of its global campaign to attract tourists the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), along with the Cathay Pacific, organised a “Welcome Day” extravaganza on August 17.

More than 3,500 visitors from around the world, including almost 1,000 mediapersons were invited for this one-day special event.

The highlight was the unveiling of the Strato-Fantasia— Asia’s first multimedia sound and light stratosphere show which was also the largest yet seen worldwide and which forms part of the overall extravaganza.

HKTB officials pointed out that an estimated 1.3 million visitors arriving in Hong Kong in July.

This although represented a drop of 5.6 per cent when compared to the same period last year, it was a considerable improvement on the 67.9 per cent shortfall which Hong Kong witnessed in May.

June for the first time witnessed the revival with 7.25 lakh visitors arriving in the city. It was but a massive shortfall of 38.2 per cent over the last year.

But HKTB Executive Director Clara Chong says this is not enough. The HKTB is determined to increase its tourist inflow to an all-time high by the time the next financial year ends even though it was hit by the SARS for almost three months.

In an effort to post an all-time high record of visitors the HKTB has also launched an eight-month programme of mega events as part of the HK$ 400 million extravanganza, with Strato-Fantasia being the first.

It will further use the Mid-Autumn Lantern festival from September 1 to September 30 to attract international tourists back to the city.

Along with the festival, the line-up will also feature an international musical fireworks competition, a winter festival and an international Lunar New Year night parade.

The events will culminate with a grand parade on the first day of the Lunar New Year to celebrate the Year of Monkey.

For the first time since its inception in 1996, the parade will be held at night with festive illuminations.

The HKTB has also come out with a new theme, “Hong Kong—live it, love it”, to promote the city on the international circuit. a new TV commercial featuring Jackie Chan will also be run around the world from next month to attract tourists.

New Delhi, August 20
Coca-Cola India said today that it was seeking to consolidate its position in the rural areas and declared that the ‘Cola War’ was over.

“Cola war was dead with 200 ml coke bottle at Rs 5,’’ Mr Sanjiv Gupta, President and CEO of Coca-Cola India said here today. “We are now concentrating at distribution and branding in the rural areas. In times to come new products that can sell in rural markets like ‘nimbupani’ (lemonade) and ‘lassi’ (buttermilk) can be launched,’’ Mr Gupta said at a CII Summit on Marketing here.

Going rural is not about taking one-time gamble but creating a long, sustainable business model that can replicate itself. The issues of availability, affordability and acceptability have to be reinforced over and over again.Rural penetration went up from 13 per cent in 2001 to 25 per cent in 2003, Mr Gupta said.

“In the case of availability, the tradeoff is between the cost of distribution and the incremental penetration. In affordability there is a volume-value trade off. In the case of acceptability, the trade off is always between customisation and standardisation of the consumer proposition”, he said.

Outlining a horse-for-courses strategy for the rural market, he said the “buying pattern of the rural consumer is different from the urban consumer, purchase behaviour is occasion-driven by events such as weddings and harvests”. “I don’t agree with the view that the rural market is a costly distribution proposition.”.

ROUND-UP

HDFC Life launches gratuity scheme

Chandigarh, August 20
HDFC Standard Life Insurance has launched a new gratuity plan that will enable employers to meet their gratuity liability in a flexible way while getting adequate returns in a systematic and cost-effective manner, said Mr Manider Sood, Regional Head of the company, here today.

Under the new plan, customers can choose any of the five options, including Secure Fund, Defensive Fund, Balanced-Managed Fund and Fund. The plan can be customised to the specific needs and requirements of each corporate client. The plan also offered three service options.
— TNS

Govt decides to revamp IA, A-I

New
Delhi: The government has decided to revamp Indian Airlines (IA) and Air-India (A-I) and a financial turnaround is expected within three years, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Rajiv Pratap Rudy said here today.

Speaking to newspersons on the sidelines of marketing summit organised by the CII, Mr Rudy said a revamp of IA and A-I was necessary if the two carriers were to operate in the increasingly competitive enviroment.
— TNS

Singapore plans to invest $1b

Singapore:
Singapore plans to invest $ 1 billion in the Indian port and airport projects when the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) comes into effect next year.

According to a report by the Channel News Asia, the CECA aims to help develop a free trade area, liberalised investment flow and bring many other economic benefits for the two countries.
— UNI

Bottled water for fountain Pepsi

New Delhi: Even as the dust raised over alleged pesticides in soft drinks is yet to settle down, PepsiCo has decided to use bottled water for its fountain Pepsi outlets across the country against filtered tap water being used at present.

The cola major also plans to launch its Aquafina brand of bottled water in 25 ml jar packs in the city soon.
— PTI

Nestle profit falls 51 pc

Amsterdam: Nestle SA said first-half profit fell 51 per cent after one-time gains boosted earnings a year earlier and as the Swiss franc’s strength against the dollar eroded sales.

New
York: Oil prices ended lower on Tuesday, retreating from highs as fresh violence in Iraq and ethnic unrest in Nigeria were offset by profit-taking ahead of US crude oil data expected to show supply rose last week.

An explosion at the United Nations’ headquarters in Baghdad on Tuesday left dozens wounded and at least 14 dead, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. envoy.
— Reuters

Murthy on DBS Group board

Singapore: Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings has appointed Mr N.R.Narayana Murthy, Chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, to its 13-man board as non-executive director.

Mr Murthy(57) will lend the country’s largest bank his know-how as a globally-feted businessman and pioneer in the field of information technology.
— UNI

Oil from IraqNew Delhi, August 20
BPCL is in the process of finalising a deal to buy 1.4 million barrels of crude oil from Iraq. "We are in the process of finalising the deal on term contract with supplies by December. We have reached an understanding with Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation," BPCL's Executive Director S.K. Sharma said on the sidelines of a press conference here.
— IANS

Spice bonanzaChandigarh, August 20
Spice Telecom today announced that all in-roamers who log on to Spice network while visiting Punjab will be eligible for a daily lucky dip, wherein they can win three days and two nights stay for a couple in one of Goa’s 5-Star “Cidade de Goa”. The offer is valid till September 13.
— TNS

‘Enterprise India’Durban, August 20
More than 55 small enterprises from India are taking part in ‘Enterprise India’, an exhibition promoted by the CII, which started here today to showcase the competitiveness of the sector.
— PTI

RanbaxyNew Delhi, August 20
The US Food and Drug Administration has given its approval to domestic pharma major Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd to market a generic version of Schering-Plough Corp’s anti-allergy Claritin tablets in the 10 mg strength.
— UNI

Hero Honda plantNew Delhi, August 20
Hero Honda Motors today said it would finalise “requisite details” regarding a third plant by this year-end to raise production from the current 2.2-million level.
— UNI

Water purifiersChandigarh, August 20
Sumeet appliances has launched five models of water purifiers. The basic model is priced at Rs 1,250 and top-end triple tube model at Rs 6,480.
— TNS

Surajkund festFatehabad, August 20
The Haryana Government will organise a trade and industry fair-cum-food festival from October 3 to October 12 at Surajkund in Faridabad. The fair will be organised by the Trade Authority of Haryana and the Tourism Department.
— OC

Kinetic bikesChandigarh, August 20
The Kinetic Engineering has launched four new models in Kolkota under ‘Kinetic Biking’ brand. The company launched two motorcycles under GF 170 Series, called “GF 170 city” and “GF Laser”. Other two models are Velocity and Boss 115.
— TNS

Karnataka planChandigarh, August 20
Karnataka is planning to tap the West Bengal market. This was stated by Mr D.B. Inamdar, Minister for Tourism and Information Technology, Karnataka. He said the state would be developed as a new tourist destination.
— TNS

IFFCO plantNew Delhi, August 20
IFFCO has decided to shut down its urea plant at Kalol and operate only the ammonia plant to meet the requirements of its DAP/NPK fertliser plant at Kandla.
— TNS